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Correction: Exchange-Coveted Grease story

Published on NewsOK
Modified: May 5, 2014 at 8:52 pm •
Published: May 5, 2014

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FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — In an AP Member Exchange story shared May 2 by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the newspaper erroneously reported the capacity of a biodiesel plant that opened last year in Norco, Louisiana. It has an annual capacity of 142 million gallons of fuel, not a daily capacity of that amount.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — In darkened alleyways, a slimy cat-and-mouse game is playing out in Texas and across America.

Men in trucks are fighting over a dirty and sometimes foul-smelling substance that restaurants once paid to get hauled off. Now it can be worth thousands per truckload. Liquid gold, some in the trade call it.

It's grease — used kitchen cooking oil from deep fryers at KFC and the seasoned saucepans of the fanciest French restaurant.

The increasingly consolidated industry, ranging from mom-and-pop operations to publicly traded giants, is marked by cutthroat competition to claim restaurant accounts. And all of them have to grab their grease before a ragtag swarm of thieves gets there first.

"This one is pretty clean," Clay Carrillo-Miranda of Haltom City's Best Grease Service said on his second-to-last stop of the day when he pumped out thick gunk from a container behind the J&J Oyster Bar in Fort Worth. "Some stink so bad you want to throw up. When it's 105 degrees, this job isn't a lot of fun, so that's when I go out at night."

And after sundown is when the thieves usually strike — and fast.

"You can pull in and drive off in five minutes. It can be $500 a night, $2,500 a week," said Carrillo-Miranda, 37, a beefy man in a black T-shirt and jean shorts. "Even if your truck gets impounded, that's $500. You're still ahead $2,000 for the week."

A 15-year veteran of the oil-recycling business, he spends several nights a month on stakeouts behind restaurants that contract with his employer. He has lost count of the locks he's replaced because of thieves with bolt cutters. His boss, Brian Smith, says a Burleson man was caught using firefighters' extrication tools to break into tanks.

Licensed collectors have used surveillance cameras, extra-heavy metal lids and off-duty cops to protect their routes while lobbying for better local enforcement and stronger state laws. In a sign of how aggressive the grease war has become, a dozen production companies are looking into creating reality TV episodes.

Chris Griffin, deputy general counsel for Irving-based Darling International and its Griffin Industries unit, a national recycler, conservatively estimates that 20 percent of its used kitchen grease is stolen each year.

The thefts are fueled in part by growing demand for biodiesel. Darling and Valero opened the country's largest biodiesel plant last year in Norco, La., with an annual capacity of 142 million gallons. Before, the grease was mainly used for lubricants, soap and animal feed.

When soybean prices spiked because of the drought in 2012, demand for used cooking grease for biofuel production rose, according to a 2013 industry study by IBIS World. The research firm estimated that sales last year reached $1.3 billion, and it predicted annual growth of 1.7 percent through 2018.

The industry has successfully lobbied legislatures in California, Virginia and North Carolina to pass stronger laws against grease theft. In Virginia, any company that buys more than 55 gallons of grease from an unregistered transporter can be fined $5,000.

And it can become a federal crime. In January 2013, Missouri grease dealer Jesse Arnold was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and required to forfeit $207,817 made from buying oil stolen in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas.

Satterfield attributes a sizable portion of a $50,000 drop in revenue last year to grease stolen from his tanks behind restaurants with which he has contracts.

"I had to lay off two fantastic guys as a result," he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (http://bit.ly/1kweWyf). It got so bad that he co-founded a side business manufacturing tanks that are harder to break into.

But Darling discounts the impact of high commodity prices.

"I don't believe grease theft ebbs and flows with market fluctuations," said Griffin, whose grandfather founded Kentucky-based Griffin Industries, which was acquired by Darling, its biggest rival, in December 2010. "Grease theft is a long-standing industry problem and has been around for as long as the company has been in business (71 years)."

What's known is that it doesn't cost much to become a grease thief — about $75 for a "trash" pump and less than $50 for a used tank, said Jerry Duty, a third-generation collector who operates Lil Grease Monsters in Grand Prairie.